Travel Channel shoots 'Mysteries at the Museum' segment at Museum of Colorado Prisons

By Charlotte Burrous

burrousc@canoncitydailyrecord.com

Posted:
04/11/2014 01:40:43 PM MDT

Courtesy Photo Colorado Department of Corrections inmate Theodore Edward Coneys, who became known as 'Denver's Spiderman of Moncrieff Place in the 1940s,' will be featured in Travel Channel's 'Mysteries at the Museum' this summer.

A sickly child, he was not expected to live to see the age of 18. But he beat the odds. When his mother died in 1911, he became homeless so he decided to ask a former acquaintance, Philip Peters, who lived at 3335 W. Moncrieff Place in Denver, to help him.

Find out more through the Travel Channel's "Mysteries at the Museum," which filmed a segment on CSP inmate Theodore Edward Coneys, No. 22815, earlier this year at the Museum of Colorado Prisons. The segment is expected to air in June or July.

Museum of Colorado Prisons Administrator Stacey Cline, who will act as the spokesperson for the museum in this segment of the show, said she enjoyed participating in the filming.

"It was surreal," she said. "It was exciting. I didn't know what to expect."

When one of the producers of the show came across the name, the person decided to do some research then contacted the museum. After discussing it with Cline, the Travel Channel arranged a date to film the segment for the show.

"While they were here, they looked at some of our artifacts," she said. "They possibly want to come back to do another story on Pearl O'Laughlin, who was convicted of murdering her 10-year-old stepdaughter. The (Travel Channel) seemed very interested in her because we have a doll she made herself and put her own hair on it. They loved our little museum."

Advertisement

Coneys broke into the house to steal food and money while Peters was out. When Coneys found a narrow attic cubbyhole, he climbed through a small trapdoor and decided to stay. After five weeks, Peters caught Coneys sneaking down for food and water one night, which brought on a fight. Then Coneys hit Peters with an old pistol he found in the house until it broke into pieces. At that point, Coneys grabbed a heavy iron stove shaker and killed 73-year-old Peters before climbing back into his hiding spot.

When Peters' body was discovered later the same day by a neighbor, officers found the doors and windows locked with no sign of forced entry. When the police searched the house, they found the trapdoor to the attic, but decided it was too small for a person to go through so they left. In the meantime, Peters' wife, who had been in a hospital, returned to the home, where she and her housekeeper heard strange noises on a regular basis. However, the police could not find anything whenever they were called.

Eventually, Mrs Peters and the housekeeper moved out of the house on Moncrieff Place. In the meantime, Coneys continued to live the house that neighbors thought was haunted because they kept hearing noises. However, whenever they called the police, officers could not find anything until July 1942 when one of the investigating officer heard a noise on the second floor and raced to top of the stairs, where he saw Coney's thin legs disappearing through the trap door, the release said.

The police pulled him down from the cubbyhole, where they found Coneys in a terrible state, filthy, emaciated and starving. The attic also was filthy and had a bad odor.

When local newspapers caught wind of the story, reporters dubbed Coneys the "Denver Spider Man of Moncrieff Place" after a detective stated, "A man would have to be a spider to stand it long up there.'"

When Coneys confessed, he was convicted and sentenced to life at the Colorado State Penitentiary, where he remained for 23 years until May 16, 1967, when he died in the prison hospital. He is buried in Mountain Vale Cemetery instead of Woodpecker Hill. Warden Wayne K. Patterson paid for Coneys' burial in an unmarked grave.

Article Comments

We reserve the right to remove any comment that violates our ground rules, is spammy, NSFW, defamatory, rude, reckless to the community, etc.

We expect everyone to be respectful of other commenters. It's fine to have differences of opinion, but there's no need to act like a jerk.

Use your own words (don't copy and paste from elsewhere), be honest and don't pretend to be someone (or something) you're not.

Our commenting section is self-policing, so if you see a comment that violates our ground rules, flag it (mouse over to the far right of the commenter's name until you see the flag symbol and click that), then we'll review it.